Eau de Rose Hill Cottage?

I’ve been reading Chandler Burr’s The Perfect Scent for the past few days – I’ve had it on my stack for about a year and have finally gotten to it. 

If you’re not familiar with it, the book is about the creation of Sarah Jessica Parker’s fragrance line a few years back, and an Hermes fragrance, Un Jardin sur le Nil. 

Chandler Burr is the fragrance critic for the New York Times and he really knows his aldehyde from his chypre.  To be honest the chemistry element of the book goes way over my head, although I really appreciate the details that go into well known fragrances like Shalimar, Chanel No 5, and Joy.

Reading about the intersection of green mango, oakmoss, and amber expertly layered and presented in one little bottle got me to thinking about the true fragrance of our lives – the ambiant scent of our homes.

The odor of a dwelling rarely smells like something you’d find engineered in a bottle.  I once lived in an apartment that smelled like apple pie – odd and delightful the aroma persisted for the 5 years that I lived there without my ever discovering where it was coming from.

I know retailers like Costco and Ikea figured out how to warm up the aura of their large impersonal warehousey stores with wonderful scents like fresh baked cinnamon rolls, cakes, and bread.  But my house now (I call it Rose Hill Cottage) rarely emits that fresh out of the oven goodness – at least that I can tell.  I was thinking about this earlier – what does it smell like?  When you live inside a home you rarely sense what it smells like to others as for some reason or another you become immune to all the variations. 

I keep candles, flowers and plants in every room – which I thought would be fun to photograph with a macro lens for this post (any excuse – I’m a macro hound).  I’m sure the scent of hay must be here too since I track it in twice a day after feeding the horses. Alfafa most of the time – which has a lovely rich, sweet perfume to it.

The cats and the dogs must come up in this perfume equation too – but what else?  This needs further photography and contemplation. 

Wondering – What does your house’s perfume consist of?

Tagged as: fragrance, home, Interior Design, scent